"I think there's a common supposition in fine-art portraiture that too much emotion can interfere with revelation. To get at someone's true character one needs to dig beyond flitting moods like happiness or brooding. Those get in the way, and in fact it takes work to avoid them. To get the shot you hang around a person. If they happen to be laughing you wait it out, and you certainly don't ask for a smile. Finally when the moment is right, when they're showing nothing, you have them stare at the camera and the image magically shows who they are. That's the idea anyway.
But I think the larger reason has to do with cheesy snapshots. Artists want to separate themselves from the common rabble. Since smiles are what you see in greeting cards and yearbooks and weddings, the best way to show that your work doesn't belong with those is not to show smiles. It's the age-old dilemma of photography. When everyone's a photographer how do you keep low-art and high-art from mixing, or, if you're going to mix them, how do you ensure the mongrel still qualifies as high-art? In this case you axe the smile."
I don't think I really believe in the idea that "too much emotion can interfere with revelation." For one, I'm not sure that fine-art portraiture has to be revelatory. I don't see anything particularly undesirable about capturing so-called flitting moods, or that such transient emotions get in the way of capturing someone's character. Perhaps a photo of that fleeting moment of giddiness or anger could be just as or more insightful than a photo "showing nothing."
...I'm also not sure that I believe that a person ever really shows nothing, even in what might typically be considered an emotionless expression. I also don't believe that a person could necessarily capture the true or pure character of a person in a single shot. People, I think, are a little more complex and faceted than that.
I would have to make an effort to look through all the photos I've taken of friends, family, strangers to really see, but just from memory I believe many of my favorite portraits actually started out as just snapshoting. I do prefer candid portraits of people over the cheesy kind, but there are a number of posed shots that I found to be very revealing, even natural-looking.
John said... "Adults laugh or smile only 15 times a day. Most of the time we are in a casual, expressionless state. Isn't deadpan less about a photographic style and more about capturing the honest the more common and honest expression?
Most photographers looking to have an honest dialog with the subject and capture an honest expression will ask the person to "act natural." When people stop their staged smile, there is a release of tension and the relationship moves from subject/camera to subject/photographer. That's honest and real."
This is an interesting thought, that capturing the deadpan is finding the most common expression in photographing, and not something I might have thought of myself. For the most part, I consider the range of human emotions to be honest, potentially anyway, but it's intriguing to focus perhaps on the "commonplace" emotions as opposed to the more vociferous expressions. I can understand the part about the honest dialogue. I myself tend to approach strangers I wish to photograph with a "Just go on as you are" or sometimes "Pretend I'm not here" out of a desire to capture more candid moments. It does become less about the subject responding to the camera and more about the subject responding to the photographer, or perhaps even responding as if nothing had interrupted or occurred.
"Mike Peters said... Well, to me, and the reason I opt for people not smiling, is that a smile is often merely a mask that people put on as a means of hiding how they really feel at any given moment."
"RichD said...
Smiling, even that big crinkly smile, doesn't necessarily connote or communicate happiness. Happy people don't always smile, and unhappy people don't necessarily *not* smile. People smile for any number of reasons, and one of the biggest reasons people do it (at least in modern American culture) is to make people THINK they're happy, when they're really not. The smile has become a social mask, a shallow affectation that people hide behind when they're out in public. The very kind of shallow affectation that a portrait artist works so hard to strip away."
Both of these statements are generally true. I'd actually be interested in portraiture which focuses perhaps on the different kinds of smiling, from the genuinely happy to the predatory shark grin to the forced painful face-hurting smile. Deception and masks can be just as intriguing as plain, honest truth...and isn't there inherently some truth in the presence of deception itself?
"Dana Reed said... Not smiling doesn't have to mean deadpan. What seem the best portraits to me, that really caught my attention, have the subject really communicating something. Expressive eyes, facial expressions that convey feelings, body language, all make it seem to me that the subject is communicating with you. And smiles would be included in that range of expressions. I don't see how a person showing no emotion communicates anything revealing about them. I'd say it more allows the viewer to form conjecture, and says more about the viewer than the subject. When I make a portrait, I engage my subject, and wait, and when I choose to press the shutter, I am trying to capture a fleeting moment where they have revealed something about themselves, in their expressions, their body language, that really shows an aspect of their character. And for me, that's what a good portrait is about."
I tend to agree with Ms. Reed on not seeing how an emotionless face necessarily communicates something revealing about them. I suppose it would depend on the specific situation, but in general, I don't think some pictoral "truth" can only be found in a neutral expression. I suppose my approach to portraits is similar to hers here in engaging the subject, waiting and watching for the moment which interests me, to which I respond. Even when subjects fail to quite act "naturally", or still seem very aware of the camera, there are things to be revealed about a person even in such a situation.
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